Leading Australian travel insurer Cover-More has retrenched a portion of its 2300-strong workforce in a bid to stave off the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has virtually grounded global travel demand.

The move by the Zurich-owned business, which holds a dominant 30.7% share of the $1.2 billion Australian travel insurance market by revenue, underscores the severity of the hit caused by the public health crisis.

Under 10% of Cover-More workers globally have been stood down with immediate effect and actions have also been taken to cut the working hours of remaining employees in the respective markets where the insurer has operations.

“No one could have imagined the scale and severity of the global COVID-19 outbreak,” Group CEO Hanno Mijer says in a statement today to insuranceNEWS.com.au. “The changes we are making will help maintain the essential operation of our business as we prepare for our future post-COVID-19.”

He says the actions will help ensure Cover-More “can emerge stronger and more competitive when global travel resumes”.

Nib Travel, the third largest travel insurance provider with a 7.6% market share, did not directly respond to a question from insuranceNEWS.com.au about whether it has plans to lay off employees.

CEO Anna Gladman says the pandemic “has had a significant impact on the travel industry and more broadly consumer behaviour around the globe”.

“Unquestionably, this is flowing through to our travel insurance business. Our current focus remains on responding to enquiries from customers who have had their travel plans impacted by COVID-19,” she told insuranceNEWS.com.au today.

“We’re also exploring the eligibility of our travel insurance business for various Government wage subsidy schemes such as JobKeeper in Australia.

“Accessing these programs means when this crisis passes and travel bounces back as we expect it will, we should be ready and well placed to take advantage of what we think will be significant market and growth opportunities.”

A Suncorp spokesman says its travel insurance team works across a number of products "and as a result we have not made any changes to that team due to the travel restrictions caused by COVID-19”.